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November 20th, 2011 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda 
US President Barack Obama addressing the Federal Parliament in Canberra. Picture: Jason Reed/AFP.
Source: AFP
I WATCHED with interest Barack Obama’s speech to the Parliament and those of Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott.
They weren’t memorable but they did the job. Interestingly, one or two press gallery journalists decided to criticise Tony Abbott because he made a point about Julia Gillard’s U-turn on uranium mining.
But Ms Gillard’s speech was loaded with Labor’s interpretation of history. Even though we are commemorating the 60th anniversary of the ANZUS treaty, the American alliance had originally been founded by the Labor Party, she claimed. Somehow, John Curtin was its founder.
But hang on, 60 years ago the ALP was in opposition and Sir Robert Menzies was the prime minister. It was not Menzies himself, by the way, who proposed and promoted the ANZUS alliance, it was his foreign minister, Percy Spender. The Americans initially said they did not want the agreement but Spender persisted. To have ignored the role of the Menzies government in formalising the US alliance is just party-politicking.
But try telling that to some of the Canberra press gallery.
The ALP may not like the Murdoch press but if you are a Liberal MP the Canberra press gallery is about as hostile as an ALP branch meeting. I can think of only one press gallery journalist who may have voted Liberal at the last election. There may be a couple of others but the Canberra press gallery is Labor country. Many of them have worked for Labor state and federal ministers.
Of course none of this matters much except for one thing: They always swallow the Labor version of history. In truth, the American alliance can be traced back to the time of Alfred Deakin when the American fleet, known as the Great White Fleet, made a historic first visit to Australia.
The Great White Fleet was invited to Australia by Alfred Deakin in 1908 to counter what he feared was the growing threat of Japan. Deakin didn’t think the protection of the British was enough, particularly as the British had withdrawn all their major warships from the Pacific in 1906.
So, in a sense, Alfred Deakin was the father of the alliance between Australia and the US.
But the first time Australians and Americans went to war together wasn’t in 1941-42 as Julia Gillard suggested but in 1918. It was at the Battle of Le Hamel on the Western Front. Interestingly, the allied general who commanded the Australians and the Americans in that successful battle was General Monash, our greatest general. That was the first battle the Americans ever fought on European soil and they fought with the Australians.
For what it’s worth, the prime minister at the time was Billy Hughes, who by then led the predecessor of the Liberal Party, known at that time as the Nationalist Party.
Personally, I see virtue in genuinely acknowledging the foreign policy achievements of the ALP. Gough Whitlam was the prime minister when Australia formally recognised China – at a time when nearly all Western countries did the same thing. Certainly, Whitlam, Hawke and Keating all understood the importance of Asia to Australia. Under Whitlam, Australia became one of the first so-called dialogue partners with ASEAN. And Bob Hawke, along with the South Koreans, was the founder of APEC.
But the Menzies government founded the Colombo Plan and Joe Lyon’s government started developing our diplomatic network in Asia.
As Julia Gillard was basking in the glow of the East Asia Summit she may have wondered how Australia ended up at that table. I may be wrong but I predict the East Asia Summit will turn out to be the peak regional organisation in the Asia Pacific region. I note with interest that is Julia Gillard’s view.
The East Asia Summit includes all the major Asia Pacific countries. None is left out. And they meet at the level of leaders.
When you get President Obama, Hu Jintao and the leaders of Japan and India together in one room you can’t say the meeting doesn’t matter. Something has to happen.
Until now, APEC has been the dominant regional forum but it has two weaknesses; it’s too big, incorporating Latin American as well as Asian economies but it excludes India.
Second, APEC includes Taiwan and Hong Kong. For that reason, China will not discuss major security issues with two “provinces” of China at the table.
Getting into the East Asia Summit was no easy matter. China did not want Australia as a member, which presented a major obstacle. Nor did a number of ASEAN countries that wanted the summit to be entirely Asian. Singapore’s prime minister told John Howard in early 2005 that Australia couldn’t get into the summit so don’t to try. Howard advised me it was best to give up. He worried that, by being rebuffed, Australia would be humiliated.
I pleaded to be able to make one last effort. If we failed to get in and the East Asia Summit really did take off, then Australia’s exclusion would be a major setback for our regional diplomacy. We would be isolated in our own neighbourhood.
Howard grumpily assented to me trying. I thought that if we ran a strong campaign with our friends it would be worth the risk of failure. I used the Japanese and Indonesians to help us. We prevailed; China backed down.
And so it was that John Howard attended the very first East Asia Summit in 2005.
History will show this was a major milestone in Australia’s engagement with Asia.
It would serve our political system well if these achievements across party lines were properly acknowledged.
But instead there is a childish attempt to ignore the achievements of each party by the other.
And that was the game Julia Gillard played last Thursday.
The press gallery should study Australian history. Not just swallow Labor’s version. That applies not just to the US alliance but to our Asian engagement.
Alexander Downer was foreign affairs minister in the Howard government from 1996 to 2007.
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